German Americans
German Americans are the largest ethnic group in the United States, with over 45 million people, comprising over a fourth of the white population. They are concentrated in the Midwest, and in eastern metropolitan areas. They comprise numerous different groups, all speaking German, and were largest language group to immigrate to the U.S. Some arrived seeking religious or political freedom, others for economic opportunities greater than those in Germany, and others simply for the chance to start afresh in the New World. Today California and Pennsylvania have the largest populations of German descent, with over six million Germans residing in the two states alone. The Midwest has the largest proportion of German Americans, with the group dominant in many rural areas. It is one of the two or three largest groups in many major metropolitan areas, including New York, Chicago, Baltimore and St. Louis.
Half the Germans became farmers, with centers of settlement in southeastern Pennsylvania (where they are called "Pennsylvania Dutch"), upstate New York central North Carolina and central texas.
The other half went to cities, primarily ports cities on the ocean (Baltimore, Philadelphia, Newark, New York), on the Great Lakes (Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee), on the Ohio River (Pittsburgh, Cincinnati. Louisville), or the Mississippi (St. Louis and all cities north to St. Paul). There were a few inland cities that attracted Germans, notably Columbus, Ohio, Indianapolis and Ft. Wayne, Indiana.
Migration trends
During the 18th and throughout most of the 19th century Germans were usually the largest or second largest group of newcomers to the United States. Large numbers of German migrated from the 1680s to 1760s. Then came a pause, but from 1840 to 1880 Germans were some religious groups, and military conscription; and pull factors, with better economic conditions in the U.S. especially the chance for farmers to own land.
Colonial: Pennsylvania and New York
Large sections of southeastern Pennsylvania and upstate New York attracted Germans. Most were Lutheran or German Reformed; many belonged to small religious sects such as the Moravians and Mennonites. (Catholics and Jews only started coming after 1840.)
Palatine migration to upstate New York was one of the largest single movements to colonial America. By 1711, for example, seven villages had been established in New York on the Robert Livingston manor. By 1750, the Germans occupied a strip some 12 miles long along the left bank of the Mohawk River. The soil was excellent; some 500 houses had been built, mostly of stone; and the region prospered in spite of Indian raids. Herkimer was the best-known of the German settlements in a region long known as the "German Flats." The most famous figure was editor John Peter Zenger, who led the fight for freedom of the press in America. Later John Jacob Astor, a German immigrant from Baden, became the richest man in America from his fur trading.
Texas
Wisconsin and Midwest
In the 21st century half of Wisconsin's population claims some German heritage, as do large proportions in nearby areas of northern Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota, as well as the Dakotas. Historians stress the importance of of "pull" and "push" factors in explaining immigration. Wisconsin offered the promise of religious freedom, jobs, a climate and landscape that reminded many Germans of the forests at home, where forests played an core role in German collective identity, national memory, and socioeconomic stability. Even better the state offered cheap, good quality land on which they could grow familiar crops such as barley and wheat; it was especially well suited for dairy farming. farmers enjoyed new freedom in being able to make their own decisions about agricultural production as opposed to being regulated by communal authorities. Catholics and Lutherans came in about equal numbers; they settled near each other but did not interact soacially or intermarry. Migration was primarily by extended family units so the first arrivals wrote enthusiastic letters to family and kin about their new life, and others joined them in a process of chain migration. Most bought their land from Yankee landowners who had purchased title from the federal government. The farms in the Midwest were much larger than those in Germany, and required larger family sizes.
The state of Wisconsin systematically encouraged immigration by establishing an Office of the Commissioner of Emigration in 1852 and placing a commissioner in New York to greet them with promotional materials in English and German. Germans were allowed to vote before establishing U.S. citizenship. About half the immigrants settled in Milwaukee, Chicago, Davenport, Dubuque and many smaller cities, with the others heading for farms and small towns.
Religion
Germans brought many different religions with them. The largest numbers were Catholic or Lutheran, although the Lutherans were themselves split several ways. The more conservative groups comprised the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod and the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. Other Lutherans formed a complex checkerboard of synods, most of which in 1988 merged, along with Scandinavian synods, into the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Still other German Protestants were not Lutherans but were descendants of the united "Evangelical Church" in Germany. They created the Reformed denomination (especially strong in New York and Pennsyslvania), and the Evangelical denomination (strongest in the Midwest). They are now part of the United Church of Christ. Many immigrants joined quite different churches from those in Germany, especially the Methodist church.
Before 1800, Amish, Mennonites, and Hutterite arrived in groups and formed closed communities in Pennsylvania; they are still in existence today and some still speak dialects of German. They set out branches into the Midwest. Dwight D. Eisemhower was born into a one such community in Abilene, Kansas.
Following the failed 1848 revolutions in German states, a wave of polical refugees fled to America. They were well educated and secular; their most prominent leader was Carl Schurz. Many German Jews arrived in the late 19th century, often setting up clothing stores in small cities across the country, such as the Goldwater Department Store in Phoenix, Arizona. (see Barry Goldwater).
Socialist who arrived after 1870 were generally hostile to religion.
Bibliography
- Thernstrom, Stephan ed. Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, (1980).
- articles by Frederick C. Luebke, "Austrians," pp. 164-171; Kathleen Neils Conzen, "Germans," pp. 405-425; La Vern J. Rippley, "Germans from Russia," pp. 425-430; Arthur A. Goren, "Jews," pp. 571-598, esp. 576-579; Don Yoder, "Pennsylvania Germans," pp. 770-772; Leo Schelbert, "Swiss," pp. 981-987.
- Barclay, David E., and Elizabeth Glaser-Schmidt, eds. Transatlantic Images and Perceptions: Germany and America Since 1776 (1997).
- Baxter, Angus. In Search of Your German Roots. The Complete Guide to Tracing Your Ancestors in the Germanic Areas of Europe. (4th ed. 2001)
- Bungert, Heike; Kluge, Cora Lee; and Ostergren, Robert C., eds. Wisconsin German Land and Life. (2006). 260 pp. online review
- Cochran, Thomas. The Pabst Brewing Company: The History of an American Business (1948) online edition
- Conzen, Kathleen Neils. "Peasant Pioneers: Generational Succession Among German Farmers in Frontier Minnesota." In The Countryside in the Age of Capitalist Transformations: Essays in the Social History of Rural America, (1985) edited by Steven Hahn and Jonathan Prude
- Conzen, Kathleen Neils. Germans in Minnesota (2003) 112pp
- Dobbert, Guido A. "German-Americans between New and Old Fatherland, 1870–1914". American Quarterly 19 (1967): 663-80. in JSTOR
- Ellis, M. and P. Panayi. "German Minorities in World War I: A Comparative Study of Britain and the USA." Ethnic and Racial Studies 17 ( April 1994): 238-59.
- Faust, Albert Bernhardt. The German Element in the United States with Special Reference to Its Political, Moral, Social, and Educational Influence 2 vol (1909) online edition
- Fogleman, Aaron Spencer. Hopeful Journeys: German Immigration, Settlement, and Political Culture in Colonial America, 1717-1775 (1995).
- Gjerde, Jon. The Minds of the West: Ethnocultural Evolution in the Rural Middle West, 1830–1917 (1997) online edition
- Hegi, Ursula. Tearing the Silence: On Being German in America (1997).
- Hobbie, Margaret, ed. Museums, Sites, and Collections of Germanic Culture in North America (1980).
- Iverson, Noel. Germania, U.S.A.: Social Change in New Ulm, Minnesota. (1966), emphasizes Turners
- Jaehn, Tomas. Germans in the Southwest, 1850-1920. (2005). 242 pp.
- Jensen, Richard. The Winning of the Midwest, Social and Political Conflict 1888–1896" (1971), focus on voting behavior of Germans, prohibition issue, language issue and school issue
- Johnson, Hildegard B. "The Location of German Immigrants in the Middle West". Annals of the Association of American Geographers 41 (1951): 1–41. in JSTOR
- Jordon, Terry G. German Seed in Texas Soil: Immigrant Farmers in Nineteenth-century Texas. (1966)
- Kamphoefner, Walter. The Westfalians: From Germany to Missouri (1987).
- Kazal, Russell A. Becoming Old Stock: The Paradox of German-American Identity (2004) ethnicity and assimilation in 20c Philadelphia
- Kazal, Russell A. "Revisiting Assimilation: The Rise, Fall, and Reappraisal of a Concept." American Historical Review 100 (1995): 437-71. in JSTOR
- Keil, Hartmuth, and John B. Jentz, eds. German Workers in Industrial Chicago, 1850-1910: A Comparative Perspective (1983).
- Luebke, Frederick C. Germans in the New World: Essays in the History of Immigration (1990).
- Luebke, Frederick C. Bonds of Loyalty: German Americans During World War I. (1974)
- Luebke, Frederick C. ed. Ethnic Voters and the Election of Lincoln (1971)
- Luebke, Frederick. Immigrants and Politics: the Germans of Nebraska, 1880–1900. (1969)
- O'Connor, Richard. German-Americans: an Informal History. (1968), popular
- Pochmann, Henry A., and Arthur R. Schultz; German Culture in America, 1600–1900: Philosophical and Literary Influences (1957)
- Roeber, A. G. "In German Ways? Problems and Potentials of Eighteenth-Century German Social and Emigration History." William and Mary Quarterly 3d ser., 44, no. 4 (1987).
- Roeber, A. G. " 'The Origin of Whatever Is Not English Among Us': The Dutch-speaking and the German-speaking Peoples of Colonial British America." In Strangers Within the Realm: Cultural Margins of the First British Empire, edited by Bernard Bailyn and Philip D. Morgan (1991).
- Schelbert, Leo, and Urspeter Schelbert. "Portrait of an Immigrant Society: The North American Grütli-Bund, 1865-1915." Yearbook of German-American Studies. Vol. 18 (1983).
- Stenzel, Bryce O. German immigration to the Minnesota river valley frontier, 1852- 1865: wir stammten aus Deutschland nach hausen Minnesota (2002), 119pp excerpt and text search
- Struve, Walter. Germans and Texas: Commerce, Migration, and Culture in the Days of the Lone Star Republic (1996).
- Tatlock, Lynne and Matt Erlin, eds. German Culture in Nineteenth-Century America: Reception, Adaptation, Transformation (2005)
- Tischauser, Leslie V. The Burden of Ethnicity The German Question in Chicago, 1914–1941 (1990).
- Tolzmann, Don Heinrich. The German-American Experience (2000) excerpt and text search
- Trefousse, Hans L., ed. Germany and America: Essays on Problems of International Relations and Immigration (1980).
- Trommler, Frank, and Joseph McVeigh, eds. America and the Germans: An Assessment of a Three-Hundred-Year History. (2 vols. 1985).
- Wittke, Carl. The German-Language Press in America (1957)
- Wittke, Carl. Refugees of Revolution: The German Forty-Eighters in America (1952) online edition
- Wittke, Carl. We Who Built America: The Saga of the Immigrant (1939), ch 6, 9 online edition
- Wokeck, Marianne S. "Harnessing the Lure of the 'Best Poor Man's Country': The Dynamics of German-speaking Immigration to British North America, 1683-1783." In To Make America: European Emigration in the Early Modern Period, edited by Ida Altman and James Horn (1991).
- Wood, Ralph, ed. The Pennsylvania Germans. (1942)
Religious groups
- Barkai, Avraham. Branching Out: German-Jewish Immigration to the United States (1994).
- Barry, Colman J. The Catholic Church and German Americans. (1953)
- Coburn, Carol K. Life at Four Corners: Religion, Gender, and Education in a German-Lutheran Community, 1868–1945 (1992).
- Gleason, Philip. The Conservative Reformers: American Catholics and the Social Order. (1968)
- McMaster, Richard K. Land, Piety, Peoplehood: The Establishment of Mennonite Communities in America, 1683-1790 (1985).
- Pahl, Jon. Hopes and Dreams of All: The International Walther League and Lutheran Youth in American Culture, 1893-1993 (1993),
- Roeber, A. G. Palatines, Liberty, and Property: German Lutherans in Colonial British America (1998).
- Scholz, Robert F. Press Toward the Mark: History of the United Lutheran Synod of New York and New England, 1830-1930 (1995).
Primary Sources
- Kamphoefner, Walter D. and Helbich, Wolfgang, eds. Germans in the Civil War: The Letters They Wrote Home. (2006). 521 pp.
See also
Online resources
- Catholic Encyclopedia article
- Reasons Germans Came to America
- “Deutsch-Athen Revisited: Writing the History of Germans in Milwaukee”, Dr. Anke Ortlepp, University of Cologne